My week started out great. I was really excited to be painting two bedrooms for a client that was expecting her second baby in the new year. We were painting the ceiling of one of the bedrooms in blue and I was really looking forward to seeing this baby’s room come together.
I also was excited because for the first time we are using Mythic Paint. Mythic is a line of paint I have known about for a while and was perfect for painting rooms for an expecting homeowner. It was developed for the US Navy to use to paint the interior of submarines – a place where the air is 100% recycled. Mythic is completely non-toxic, zero VOC and up until a month ago, not available Vancouver.
I got the car loaded up, dropped the kids off a school and headed over to our customer’s house to meet the crew.
And. Then. This. Happened.
Looks bad doesn’t it?
Ya, it was. Let’s just say I am not too happy with the paint store for not re-securing the lid after checking the colour. However I am happy that this event did not happen in the back of my car.
But that’s my customer’s carpet and it needed to get cleaned up – completely.
Since this was my first ever paint disaster and I had no idea what to do, I was pretty grateful Luke was there. Not only is Luke a great painter, he is also very calm. Something I needed very much while thoughts of expensive carpet replacement were racing through my mind.
First Step – Remove the extra paint. Luke scraped up as much of the excess paint off of my dripping jeans, socks and the carpet as he could with a large putty knife.
Step Two – Water. The key to getting latex paint out of carpet without staining is to not let it dry. Saturate the paint with enough water to keep it wet. Luke got a bucket of warm water and some rags and started soaking the area. At first, I was pretty distressed to see him do this because it seemed to be making the mess bigger but calm Luke assured me all would be good.
Step Three – Suck it up. If you are a mom or a pet owner you probably have already decided that the Bissell Little Green is the handiest machine out there. Since my homeowner was a mom, she had one of these fabulous machines on hand. Out came the Bissell and I got to work sucking up the paint and water.
Step Four – Repeat soak and suck but add srubbing with a bristle brush. I spent about an hour adding water, scrubbing with a bristle brush and sucking up the water. In fact the only paint I couldn’t get out was the paint left from the last painter that had dripped on the carpet and left to become a crusty mess.
You have to repeat these steps until the water you are sucking up is clear. Otherwise once everything is dry you will end up with a stain that will rise to the top of the carpet. Depending on the colour of your carpet and the colour of the paint, this might take some time.
An hour later the only casualties were my jeans, socks and shirt. The carpet was clean and my nerves were back in check. I was however the subject to a bit of poking from my husband who thought the whole thing was pretty funny.
So the lesson today was stay calm, add water and suck it up.
Oh and check the lid on the can at the store. (Guess who picked up the paint from the store? Dear.)
